How to Write a Genealogy Course Syllabus

How to Start Personal Histories and Genealogy Journalism Businesses: Genealogy Course Template, Syllabus, Writing & Marketing Guide by Anne Hart Publisher's price: $17.95 Format: Paperback Size : 6 x 9 Pages: 242 ISBN: 0-595-38698-9 Published: Feb-2006   International orders: Call 00-1-402-323-7800

Here’s how to open your own genealogy, family history journalism, or personal history business. This includes a genealogy course template and instruction on how to start and operate a home-based business working with personal and oral histories, genealogy, family history, and life story writing. You also learn how to interview people, what questions to ask, and how to put together a business and/or a course or book on any aspect of genealogy around the world, journalism, writing, personal history, and life story writing.

Start your own course using the genealogy course template to inspire you to develop your own specialties and niche areas. Work with almost any ethnic group, and create businesses ranging from DNA-driven genealogy reporting services to family history, memoirs writing, or personal history videography services.

Use social history to find information such as female ancestors’ maiden names that had not been recorded using hidden and niche areas of information, including ethnic, religious, and institutional sources such as widows’ military pension applications. You’ll learn how to write social history by using genealogy journalism resources, find hidden records, and market your own course or write your book or report in many different areas of personal history and genealogy journalism. Female ancestors’ information also may be found in midwives’ records, journals, or diaries and in later times, in prenatal records books.

Start your own business or set up a course and teach or train others to be genealogists or personal and oral historians. Write for historical, folkloric, or genealogy publications, specializing in writing eulogies for people or pets. Interview friends or family, and write obituaries for publications that have no staff obituary writer on board all the time. Assemble family history time capsules, keepsakes, or courseware and software. Record family history how-to lectures on audio CDs or video DVDs.

Teach life story journalism. Or write life stories as plays and skits. Do research for clients, libraries, and institutions. Learn what is appropriate to charge clients for personal history, genealogy research, or life story recording and writing services.

 Make family tree charts with software or craft them in scrap books. Learn how to be an independent documentarian. Produce video and audio recordings such as DVDs for your clients or family. Develop genealogy and personal history classes anywhere. You’ll make history. To start, first you need to create a course syllabus-either to teach beginners genealogy or to train professionals in other fields to use personal history techniques to find hidden information, or organize information for the reports you generate for your clients or family. Start your own business, club, franchise, or course.

One of the best ways to publicize and market your genealogy course and/or family history instructional book is to write a syllabus. Teach an online or in-person course related to the topic of your book. Require students to purchase the book. Teach the contents of the book in a how-to course. What’s your hobby or field of expertise? My usual full-time working day emphasizes genealogy journalism and personal history research. My hobby combines visual anthropology and producing, viewing, and reviewing documentaries.

If your field relates to personal history or genealogy, here’s how to write a syllabus to teach online (or in person) a genealogy course. You can train or teach at a variety of levels.

Starting your own classes and reserving a conference room in a library, church social hall, or community center don’t require degrees or credentials, only expertise. Nothing lets you learn a subject better than if you have to teach it to beginners. If you don’t like teaching face-to-face or training employees in a work setting, teach online from your Web site. Or apply to teach a course in something you can do well at online educational sites such as blackboard.com. Read online education publications such as the Virtual U Gazette. Check out GetEducated.com at: http://www.geteducated.com/vug/index.asp.

 You learn more from your students’ feedback than you ever learned from books in a variety of areas related to writing and publishing. The first step is to write a great syllabus that convinces others to hire you to teach a subject related to the information in your book. This technique works well with nonfiction, how-to or self-help books.

 If your book is a novel, your course syllabus might emphasize plotting the novel or marketing and promotion. To sell your book in this type of class, you’d use each chapter to teach how to write “tag lines,” emotions and behaviors in a novel, or portions of your novel as tools for fiction writers in the genre of your book—such as plotting the mystery or romance novel.

You’d use passages to teach consistency and transitions that move the plot forward and show how the characters grow and change or the romantic tension. A similar technique of “teaching the process” would be used if you wrote plays, poetry, or cinematic scripts. A syllabus helps you get hired and/or to recruit students so you can sell your book and teach a class or train a group of people either online or in person.

You can adapt this syllabus plan and format to the subject of your book in nearly any field. Instead of ‘genealogy,’ just substitute the concept and framework of your own book. Here’s how to write a syllabus.

A short course may be taught online or arranged in any room available from a church basement to a library conference room. A seminar can last a few hours. A lengthy course can be planned for an entire semester at any level in adult education, for college extended studies programs, or at community centers. You need experience in your area of expertise, and a published book helps your credibility. If you’re teaching a course in a community college or university for college credit you’d need a graduate degree. For public school you’d also need a teaching credential unless your expertise level is the equivalent. Teaching vocational education and using your book as instructional text is more flexible. You can teach in the extended studies (not for credit) department of universities and community colleges based on experience. Credentials in your field of work are helpful to get you hired, but without them, start your own course online or from an available room.

You can share a rented room to teach the course with other trainers or teachers. Least expensive is to teach at your Web site and sell your book online to students. At the end of the course, give them a certificate in the subject you’ve taught related to your book. Require students to buy your book, and use it throughout the course.

One of the easiest ways to get hired to teach a course is to offer one in genealogy and/or personal history, if you have done your research on how genealogists find their information. Since you have written a book, can you now call yourself an expert?

If genealogy, personal history, oral history, social history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, creative writing, early handwriting, or journalism interests you, a beginner’s course in genealogy attracts people interested in where their ancestors came from and how they lived, ate, and played. Classes often fill up quickly.

People like to take courses where they can learn about themselves and their families’ life styles. Genealogy courses work well online, at social, ethnic, and religious clubs, and at senior centers. So here’s how to begin writing a syllabus for a genealogy course.

Your first genealogy course syllabus expands the four keys of genealogy research: identity, name, date information was recorded, locality, and kinship. How you organize, edit, and write a genealogy course syllabus often determines whether you’ll be hired to teach a course in genealogy for beginners.

If you’re a genealogist or want to promote your genealogy-oriented book or journalistic skills, teach a course in genealogy. Genealogy courses rely on verifiable details. Accidental or intentional alterations by scribes can dramatically affect information. Courses that go on year after year are evaluated by students as excellent.

Genealogists are concerned about accurate reproduction of texts or entry of information. For generations, most public family history entries were hand copied by government record clerks, clergy, and scribes deeply influenced by cultural, political, and theological disputes of their day.

Your syllabus can help students look for mistakes and intentional changes in surviving records. Can the original names be reconstructed? Genealogy course content also includes the social history of where and why these changes were made and how family historians go about reconstructing what might be the original names, relationships, and records as closely as possible.

Use your syllabus as a tool to outline your course. Students want an easy-to-follow syllabus. The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word ‘syllabus’ as an outline of a course of study. It’s a table of contents with a schedule of topics, not a book proposal.

Your syllabus also needs to cover how to find records of hard-to-trace people, such as clergy. How would you direct students who want to trace nuns, priests, ministers, or rabbis?

Genealogy courses given in churches’ social halls sometimes attract those who want to trace difficult-to-find genealogy records of clergy. Old books make excellent genealogy sources. Other primary sources to trace clergy or religious educators include College Alumni Records , The Clergy Lists , Crockford's Directories , Fasti Ecclesiae, Anglicanae, Parish Registers, Bishop's Records, Censuses, and County Directories.

What you need to organize before teaching courses in genealogy journalism

1. How to design and write family history newsletters--or teach others to do the same.

2. How much time to spend letting each student talk about the work they have done during the week--depending upon how many students you have in class.
3. How to organize family history files.
4. How to break topics into memoirs or biographies (family or clients).
5. How to keep organized and accessible research files
6. How to write inquiries and queries by email and letter.
7. How to abstract and transcribe basics.
8. How to write client or family research reports and summaries.
9. How to write personal use research reports and summaries
10. How to make time capsules.
11. How to put historical context into essays, numbering formats and citation formats.
12. How to compile and send family newsletters.
13. How to prepare to write a family history or genealogy-related book.
14. How to publish and promote a family history or genealogy book.
15. How to incorporate research

 GENEALOGY COURSE SYLLABUS TEMPLATE  

A genealogy course syllabus for beginners includes answers to one of the most frequently asked questions: How do you find female ancestors and solve identity problems when maiden surnames didn’t appear on the death certificates? Before you try to organize and write a syllabus, first list topics you’ll cover in your syllabus. 

Planning Your Syllabus

List all obvious items. Keep this list next to your blank syllabus page. Then list items often omitted from a syllabus for a beginning course in genealogy. Compare your syllabus with other genealogy course outlines that have received great student evaluations. Your clue is whether the course is repeated year after year. There are several copyrighted genealogy course outlines on the Internet to peruse. Use them only for comparison and motivation. Keep your syllabus unique to your own course. Make a list of resources to be used in your own course before you begin writing your syllabus. 

Resources List

Social History (brief)

Genealogy sources created by women:

Diaries, journals, letters, postcards, family Bibles, heirlooms, artifacts, oral history, legislative petitions, atypical sources, published family histories, cemetery records, tombstone inscriptions or rubbings, church records, censuses, military records, hospitals, orphanages, institutions, sanitariums, passenger arrival lists, city directories, notaries’ records, voter lists/registrations, pensions, widows’ pension applications/civil war, orphans and guardianship records, land records, marriage records, medical records, Eugenics Record Office, (ERO), social data, midwives’ journals, doctors’ journals, asylums, divorce records, wills, probate, court records, school records, ethnic sources, codicils, ethnic/religious hospital records, naturalization laws. 

            After you compile this list, put it aside to refer to as you write your syllabus. Begin outlining the syllabus by starting with the course information, instructor information, text or reading materials, course descriptions, course calendar or schedule, and references or bibliography.

 Each category would get a one or two-sentence description summarizing what will be covered in the course and what assignments are required of students. Keep your syllabus short— about three pages or less. The syllabus in a semester-long college level, 3-unit genealogy course meant for beginners and taught online or in person would look like this in its layout:  

                                                Syllabus

Course Number/Title: Genealogy and Family History 1

Name of School or College

Year and Month:

Department:

Credit Hours 3

Required Text

Days/Time

Instructor

Location

Prerequisite: None

Course Placement: Adult Education, Extended Studies, Community College, University Undergraduate level. 

Overview

In Genealogy 1, students will learn special strategies for uncovering hard-to-find information about their ancestors. By the end of this course, students will become more versatile in using interdisciplinary skills for researching family and social history resources. 

Course Description

Genealogy 1 is an introductory course in family and personal history research methods that includes learning interviewing and recording skills. This survey course covers the strategies of genealogical research in North America and introduces the student to the techniques of genealogical research around the world. Students able to read other languages may work on genealogical records in other languages if they can translate their findings, projects, or assignments to the class in English.  

Research Methods

Students are introduced to a survey of all the methods used to identify individuals and their ancestors, including paper records, online searches, surname groups online, and DNA-driven genealogy resources.  

Learning Objectives for Genealogy 1

At the end of this course, students will have learned the following skills: 

1.      Students will be able to research the following resources: 

Original records

Family histories

Church records

Censuses

Passenger Arrival Lists

City directories

Family history libraries and genealogy sections of public and university libraries

Voter lists and registrations

Military records and pensions, widows’ pensions

Land records and notary records

Marriage records

Medical records

Divorce records

Ethnic women and men

              African American

              Native American

              Jewish American

              European Immigrants

              Chinese and Japanese Immigrants in California 

2.      Methods for determining maiden names.

3.      Solving identity problems in genealogy research

4.      Methods for identifying women (midwives’ records)

5.      Genealogy as social history

a.       child bearing and raising in genealogy research

b.      children born out of wedlock and genealogy research

c.       women’s work and genealogy records,

d.      property tax records

e.       religion and genealogy information

f.        women’s reform movements, rights, and genealogy records

g.       merging social and family history in genealogy research

h.       documenting your own ancestor’s history

6.      Unpublished Genealogy Sources

7.      Published Genealogical Sources

8.      How to research population schedules

9.      Probate and court records

10.  Slave genealogy and schedules

11.  Social history research and biographies

12.  Property, Inheritance, Naturalization and Divorce laws for genealogists

13.  Widows’ pensions and applications-Acts and Laws, survey

14.  DNA-driven genealogy, methods, resources, matrilineal and patrilineal research, surname groups and genetics associations

15.  Online research resources

16.  Checklist for genealogy research

17.  Genealogical case studies

18.  Articles and Bibliography

19.  National Archives and Genealogy Research

20.  How to read abstracted records

21.  How to find and read microfilms and microfiche records

22.  Military pensions—records in the National Archives

23.  Searching records of the Veterans Administration

24.  Published indexes to pension files and other aids

25.  Genealogy journalism methods—interviewing and recording

26.  Oral history, video and audio recording—what questions to ask. 

How Students will apply the newly learned genealogy research skills: 

1. Use the methods of scientific genealogical research.
2. Establish lines of descent for the person or family you select and develop a pedigree chart or family history tree of names and critical dates such as birth, marriage, and death for each ancestor on the family tree and/or pedigree chart.
3. Organize genealogy records.
4. Interview and record relatives or selected persons.
5. Research the past.
6. Use online technology to research or supplement written records and develop a pedigree chart or family tree.

Six Assignments and Projects: Due by End of 12-Week Course. (Insert Specific Due Dates) One assignment is due every two weeks. 

1. Write a publishable 1,000-word researched family history/genealogy article and submit it to a publication.
2. Develop a list of 30 to 60 questions (chosen from a list of suggested questions to ask from the handout) to ask another person during a genealogy-oriented or life story-oriented personal or family history recorded interview.
3. Interview using critical and creative thinking skills one or more older adults and record on audio or video tape a half-hour to one-hour life story experience to submit to an oral history archive library. Obtain a signed release form from all persons interviewed to send the recording to an oral history library. Give all persons interviewed copies of the interview recorded on tape or disc, such as a CD or DVD.
4. Use written records and online resources/technology relevant to your personal interests or selected discipline. Genealogy has several areas of emphasis including archival records research, oral history, personal history, family history, video biography/life story recording, and DNA-driven genealogy/genetics for ancestry.
5. Understand opportunities, skills, and requirements for genealogy journalism and publishing concentrations.
6. Research the diversity of cultures in North America and other countries as related to how genealogy records have been maintained.
7. Find several new or hidden ways to find genealogy information on females whose maiden names (surnames) were not recorded in the usual records such as censuses and city directories. How would you find birth certificates of women?

Course Competencies: 

1.      Learn how to perform scientific genealogical research.

2.      Fill out and expand a pedigree chart and family tree--first by hand and then using technology or genealogy software.

3.      Collect sources and resource information and organize the sources using records, legacies, diaries, letters, or journals.

4.      Understand the value of journaling and archiving journals, letters, and diaries.

5.      Read an article on how to restore old diaries and photos.

6.      Write and record as audio or video a life story to keep for future generations or to put in a time capsule. One copy would be text for reading and another recorded in any format, including text and photos, audio or video. Be aware technology changes, and a text copy on acid-free paper is required just in case the recorded format can no longer play.

7.      Learn how to correspond with relatives or friends and what questions to ask when asking for genealogical information.

8.      Fill out family group sheets for recorded information to be transcribed or kept in text form.

9.      Read an article on genealogical identification, orphan trains, and family skeletons or hidden facts on everything from how a person’s race or religion was listed to name changes. Understand how some pre-1948 housing laws and codes excluded certain groups from buying property in various areas and how some records were changed so people could buy homes. Research articles on this subject as related to genealogy records.

10.  Understand the four keys of genealogy as research tools: identity, name, date information was recorded, locality, and kinship.

11.  Research the American and/or Canadian trains when children were sent from the East to the West. These trains are separate from the orphan trains. Records with the children’s names are in various archives. Find out where to find the records.

12.  Learn organization, documentation, filing techniques.

13.  Analyze, interpret, and present genealogy-related findings.

14.  Keep a research notebook that cites each source of documentation.

15.   Look at working files that organize genealogical documents.

16.  Listen to a recording of oral history. Read an article on restoring or preserving keepsakes, heirlooms, photos, and scrap books that document family traditions.

17.  Use oral history as a research method. Learn to record oral history in audio and/or in video using a camcorder or audio recorder.

18.  Learn how items and traditions have been preserved by families, librarians, conservationists, archivists, or family and public historians.

19.  Gather family folklore, recipes, superstitions, or traditions.

20.  Record family rites of passage, celebrations, or traditions.

21.  Search genealogy records on the Internet

22.  Read published genealogy information online.

23.  Survey genealogy published materials.

24.  Enter family information and print-out computer-generated charts and family trees.

25.  Learn how to use vital records, divorce and cemetery records, jurisdictions records, original records, Social Security Death Index records online, and specific localities searches of historical groups for an area. Look for transcriptions of original documents.

26.  Understand handwriting changes and how to interpret early American handwriting. Translate documents recorded in early American handwriting.

27.  Find out where to obtain court records used in genealogy research.

28.  Use church data to fill in missing information.

29.  Use newspapers in genealogy research

30.  Trace ancestor’s lives using a city directory.

31.  Research information on the Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. Locate the nearest Branch Family Center and research an ancestor or friend.

32.  Learn to research immigration, emigration, and migration records, ships’ passenger lists, Naturalization records.

33.  Investigate the reason why your ancestor immigrated to America. Trace the migration patterns used. Use passenger lists and naturalization records and find out where these records are located.

34.  Use land and tax records, school records, and ethnic records.

35.  Research what records are available in the National Archives. Find out what military records are available to genealogists for research. Find out the addresses to write to for military, pension, and bounty land records.

36.  Plan for and/or attend a genealogy-related seminar, research-oriented field trip, family reunion, or a meeting of a heritage, historical, or lineage association. Read an article on or view a documentary on a family reunion. Research what grants are available from various societies related to genealogy research.

37.  Read an article on how to look at medical histories and genograms. A genogram is a schematic representation (drawing) of a family's medical history. A genogram describes the medical and/or genetic history of a family and includes family boundaries, attitudes, values, beliefs and related psychological history of family members.

38.  Look at a Web site or surname group online researching DNA-driven genealogy for deep ancestry research. Read an article or handout on the psychological aspects of studying one’s own family history. Start a genogram of your family. Does DNA-driven genealogy appeal more to anthropologists or to genealogists? 

Libraries and Field Trips

            Visit a library that has records related to genealogy and/or oral history research or archives. Record in your notebook in two paragraphs what you learned from the field trip and what most interested you there. 

Method of Instruction

            Class discussion, lectures, field trips, video documentaries, class participation, individual Internet computer research, collaborative projects, handouts, videos, and personal history recording projects is used. This course may be taught online or in person. 

Evaluation

            Class participation and completion of projects/assignments is due by the end of the course. Assignments are due by the due date specified in the handout.  

Equipment

Access to the Internet, a personal computer and printer, a tape or other audio digital recorder or camcorder using either tape or DVDs, and a DVD or CD recorder/R/RW disk drive in your computer or other device that saves a computer file to a CD and/or a DVD. Save your recorded projects on DVDs or CDs. Instruction will be provided on how to save any recorded material to a DVD or CD. Technical help will be available. 

Length of Course

Adjust the syllabus content and assignments to the length of your own course. Genealogy courses may run for a 12, 16 or 18-week semester in adult education unified school districts or in extended studies or community college classes.                         

                                                                        ***

 

Ethnic Genealogy Web Sites

(Usually, there are several genealogy sites on the Web for each ethnic group.)

Acadian/Cajun: & French Canadian:  http://www.acadian.org/tidbits.html  

Afghanistan Genealogy: http://www.kindredtrails.com/afghanistan.html

African-American: http://www.cyndislist.com/african.htm

African Royalty Genealogy: http://www.uq.net.au/~zzhsoszy/

Albanian Research List: http://feefhs.org/al/alrl.html

Armenian Genealogical Society: http://feefhs.org/am/frg-amgs.html

Asia and the Pacific: http://www.cyndislist.com/asia.htm

Austria-Hungary Empire:    http://feefhs.org/ah/indexah.html

Baltic-Russian Information Center: http://feefhs.org/blitz/frgblitz.html

Belarusian—Association of the Belarusian Nobility: http://feefhs.org/by/frg-zbs.html

Bukovina Genealogy: http://feefhs.org/bukovina/bukovina.html

Carpatho-Rusyn Knowledge Base: http://feefhs.org/rusyn/frg-crkb.html

Chinese Genealogy: http://www.chineseroots.com.

Croatia Genealogy Cross Index: http://feefhs.org/cro/indexcro.html

Czechoslovak Genealogical Society Int’l, Inc.: http://feefhs.org/czs/cgsi/frg-cgsi.html

Eastern Europe:   http://www.cyndislist.com/easteuro.htm

Eastern European Genealogical Society, Inc.: http://feefhs.org/ca/frg-eegs.html

Eastern Europe Ethnic, Religious, and National Index with Home Pages includes the FEEFHS Resource Guide that lists organizations associated with FEEFHS from 14 Countries. It also includes Finnish and Armenian genealogy resources: http://feefhs.org/ethnic.html 

Ethnic, Religious, and National Index 14 countries: http://feefhs.org/ethnic.html

(Finland) Genealogical Society of Finland: http://www.genealogia.fi/indexe.htm

Finnish Genealogy Group: http://feefhs.org/misc/frgfinmn.html

Galicia Jewish SIG: http://feefhs.org/jsig/frg-gsig.html

German Genealogical Digest: http://feefhs.org/pub/frg-ggdp.html

Greek Genealogy Sources on the Internet: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cgaunt/greece.html

Genealogy Societies Online List: http://www.daddezio.com/catalog/grkndx04.html